BATAVIA1913-001 - museum specimen
Armati bark spirit-warning bullroarer
Indonesia - Noord-Nieuw-Guinea (Dutch New Guinea), Sarmi hinterland - Oceania - Sahul
Restricted
Source term: snorrebot
snorrebot (Dutch) = 'bullroarer' — the register's own term; no Armati-language name is recorded.
Spirits about meant a voice in the air: among the Armati, in the forest country inland and southwest of Sarmi on New Guinea's north coast, a plain piece of tree bark whirled on a cord warned women and children that the spirits were near — and to keep away. The 1913 Batavia register listed the bark roarer among the workaday gear of Armati life — bows, sago mallets, plaited cord bags, a fire-making wristband — and one other sounding thing: a sacred bamboo flute.
Muziekinstrument, snorrebot, een stuk boombast aan een touw, om vrouwen en kinderen voor de geesten te waarschuwen.
Musical instrument, bullroarer: a piece of tree bark on a cord, to warn women and children of the spirits.
Notulen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, deel LI (1913), Bijlage VII, p. CVII, accession 17076.
- Object
- A piece of tree bark on a single cord; Bataviaasch Genootschap accession 17076, entered in the 1913 register as Armati material from inland southwest of Sarmi.
- Function
- Sounded to warn women and children that spirits were near.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - Regional anchor inland southwest of Sarmi town (modern South Sarmi, where Papua provincial and language sources place Armati/Kwerba communities); the 1913 register records only 'landwaarts in ten Z.W. van Sarmi', no collection site.
- Source location
Page references
Bijlage VII, pp. CVI-CVII, accession 17076
- Forbidden to women